Ultra-orthodox protestors throw chairs in their zealous opposition of a women's prayer service at the Western Wall.

This week's Torah portion, Pinchas, is often called a "difficult" portion because it includes a prominent story with a morally questionable message. The story is about an Israelite man, Phineas (Pinchas in Hebrew), who took it upon himself to kill a fellow Israelite who engaged in sexual immorality. In Jewish tradition, the story is a touchstone for debate over how far a person can go in enforcing morality on others.

The story, as interpreted by the rabbis, begins with the nations of Moab and Midian attempting to defeat the Israelites by unconventional means. The Moabite and Midianite women tried to sexually entice the Israelite men to seduce them into the worship of idols. Their hope was to trick the Israelites into abandoning their God so that God would no longer protect them.

The dalliances between the Israelite men and the foreign women so enraged God that the Israelites were in danger of being wiped out by a plague that God delivered as punishment. Phineas took immediate action. He saw a high-ranking Israelite man escorting a Midianite woman into his tent and immediately picked up a spear and killed them both (Numbers 25:8). In the story, Phineas' swift and deadly action ended the plague and saved the Israelites.

The rabbis of the Talmud cannot reconcile Phineas' execution of the Israelite man and Midianite woman with their own ideas about justice and morality. Punishment, according to the rabbis, should be authorized by courts and procedures, not by zealous vigilantes. The rabbis came to a split decision in which they justified Phineas' actions as fulfilling God's will, but they also concluded that if the high-ranking Israelite had picked up a sword or spear and killed Phineas in self-defense, that killing also would have been justified (B. Sanhedrin 82b). A person who takes the law into his or her own hands, they suggest, must be willing to accept the consequences when the offender becomes a defender.

The story, and the rabbis' interpretation of it, presents more questions than answers. The idea that the Israelite could have defended himself does not change the outcome of the story. It does not solve the moral outrage of his execution. There is no way to justify the moral implications of Phineas. And, yet, this is Torah. Our tradition asks us to struggle to find positive meaning in it, a message for our own times.

Moral zealotry is on the rise in our society today. We are living in a time in which it is common for people to justify anti-social behavior in the name of moral imperatives. Public servants refuse to issue marriage licenses when they are offended by same-sex couples. Activists block highway traffic to protest the killing of civilians by police. At the Western Wall, ultra-orthodox Jews throw chairs at people and rip apart their prayerbooks because they are offended by women reading from the Torah. We have many examples of modern-day heirs of Phineas who take direct and disruptive action when they believe that God is on their side.

The rabbis are unwilling to make a blanket condemnation of such zealotry. They recognize – and we can, too – that there are times when civil disobedience and violation of social norms is the right thing to do in the face of injustice and immorality. However, the rabbis also warn that anyone who wishes to take such action must do so with caution. Before playing the role of the zealot in complete certainty of our righteousness, we must consider that we might, in fact, be completely and certainly wrong. We must consider and accept the consequences of our actions.

As we enter our quadrennial season of national political decision-making, it is only natural that engaged citizens will feel passion in promoting their views and opinions. For myself, I can say that I know that I feel energized by politicians who inspire me. I also know that I can feel enraged by those politicians whom I believe threaten my beliefs. I know that I have been guilty of burning with the fires of zealotry, and I have sometimes come to regret the choices I have made in zealous passion.

The Torah and our tradition come to remind us that passion for a good cause can be a good thing, but it can also be a trap. If we allow ourselves to get carried away with our zealotry – if it becomes a justification for speaking or acting in hurtful ways toward others – we must be willing to accept the consequences of the harm we do. We owe it to ourselves and to our society to balance our passion with a measure of humility. We must not allow our righteous fervor to turn into self-righteous zeal.

Sometimes life seems to crawl along slowly. We cannot wait to get on with things and move to the next step. Other times, life seems to speed by us. We wonder where the years went.

This week's Torah portion (Chukat) has a hidden message about how time changes us and how, if we are not paying attention, life can rush right past us and leave us unprepared for new challenges.

The first section of the portion relates the inexplicable laws of the Red Heifer (you can read more about it here), and passes quickly to the story of the Israelites in the wilderness of Tzin, again grumbling about not having enough water. The transition from one section to the other goes like this: "The entire Israelite community came to the wilderness of Tzin in the first month…" (Numbers 20:1).

However, the seemingly simple transition from the laws of the Red Heifer to the story of the water shortage hides a secret. The time it takes to get to the "first month" is not a matter of days or weeks. It is actually thirty-eight years that pass by without comment.

How do we know that the story of the Israelites' grumbling about water happened thirty-eight years after the laws of the Red Heifer? You can discover this only by peaking ahead in the book of Numbers.

The book of Numbers began by telling us that it had been two years since the Israelites left Egypt. All of the stories previous to the Red Heifer in Numbers took placed during that year. However, in the book's final portion (Mas'ei), we read a list of all the places where the Israelites camped during their forty years of wandering. There we see (in Numbers 33:36-37) that the wilderness of Tzin was the penultimate stop on their journey before coming to the edge of the frontier with the land of Israel, forty years after leaving Egypt. In the blink of an eye, thirty-eight years passed.

This passage of time helps to explain what happened in Tzin. For the second time during the Israelites' journey, Moses responded to the people's complaints about not having enough water. In the first instance (Exodus 17:1-7), forty years earlier, Moses had followed God's instructions to strike the rock to cause water to flow to slake the Israelites' thirst. In the second instance, God told Moses to "speak to the rock" to make the water flow. The text tells us, however, that Moses ignored God's instructions. He called the Israelites "rebels" and, instead of speaking to the rock, "he raised his hand and struck the rock twice" to produce the water.

What happened? Did Moses remember the long-ago success of hitting the rock and fall back on a familiar path to produce the desired result? After forty years of leading the Israelites through the wilderness, had Moses come to believe that he didn't need God's instructions anymore and he could just rely on his previous experiences? Was Moses, in his old age, just confused about what to do and followed an old and familiar pattern?

We can't be sure why Moses lost patience with the Israelites and decided to strike the rock instead of following God's instructions to speak to it. It does seem, though, that God was not pleased with Moses' choice. God tells Moses that, because of what he did at Tzin, "You shall not lead this congregation into the land that I have given them" (Numbers 19:12).

Thirty-eight years is either a very short time, or it is a very long time. It is short enough for Moses to believe that what worked before will work again nearly four decades later. It is short enough that it passes in the amount of time it takes to pause between two verses.

But thirty-eight years is also long enough for Moses to forget that God – not himself and his experience – is the source of his wisdom and authority. Thirty-eight years is long enough to grow weary and unkind to the people he had devoted his life to serving. Thirty-eight years may have been long enough to convince Moses that he knew it all, when, in truth, he had forgotten it all.

We may not notice the changes that can happen in us as we grow older, but those changes can take us along wrong paths and undo us. That's not an indictment against Moses or against us. It's just part of what happens in our short, temporary lives. We cannot stay forever energetic, optimistic and hopeful. Eventually – seemingly in the blink of an eye – we can grow dependent on our old tricks, cynical about the changes in the world around us, and pessimistic about the future. Maybe that's part of what happened to Moses.

Life is short. Moses took note of this when he wrote in Psalm 90, "At daybreak, [people] are like grass that renews itself… but by dusk, it withers up and dies." And, the psalm says that the days of our lives "pass by speedily and we are in darkness." Life can pass us by.

But the psalms also reminds us that, despite our tendency to lose track of time, we can find hopeful and meaning even as we age. Moses wrote, "Yes, teach us to count our days, that we may obtain a heart of wisdom" (Psalms 90:12).

We never lose the opportunity to gain in wisdom, if we have a heart to do so. If we keep our attention on that which is eternal, and not focussed on our own imperfect and brief experience, we can continue to grow wise as we grow old. The passing of days may be fleeting, but it can also teach us to continue to say "yes" to life.

This is the sermon I am giving tonight at Temple Sinai in Cranston, Rhode Island.

We lost a giant this past Saturday. Elie Wiesel was a great man, but not only because he chronicled the Shoah and kept the memory of its six million Jewish victims alive for more than 70 years by testifying as an eye witness in powerful written and spoken words. Wiesel’s greatness was equally due to the way he recognized an important truth and acted upon it. The Shoah was not just a horrifying and nearly fatal attack on the physical existence of the Jewish people. It was also a horrifying attack on Jewish values and the values of humanity. Wiesel spent his life standing up for the Jewish people, but he also spent his life standing up for our values and for human beings of any and every religion, nation and race that was threatened by intolerance, violence and genocide.

In the 1970s and 80s, Wiesel spoke out forcefully for the cause of Jews trapped in the Soviet Union and in Ethiopia, but he also was an activist for Black South Africans living under the appalling oppression of apartheid. In the 1990s and 2000s, Wiesel continued to fight against Holocaust deniers and for the state of Israel during the era of Intifada, but he also spoke before the UN Security Council to call attention to the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. He rallied the world’s attention to the Bosnian victims of genocide in the former Yugoslavia, the plight of Miskito Indians in Nicaragua and the Kurds in northern Iraq and Turkey.

Elie Wiesel was great because he lived this truth: The highest calling of a Jew is to be a servant of God and of all humanity.

It deeply saddens me that in this week following the passing of Elie Wiesel, there is such urgent need for us to speak up and act for the sake of God and humanity. It has been a painful week. We are still reeling from the terrorist attack in Istanbul in which jihadists killed 41 people at the city’s airport. Twenty-two were killed in a terrorist attack in Bangladesh. In Baghdad, a minivan packed with explosives killed at least 250. The Islamic State then followed up with more bombings in Medina and two other cities in Saudi Arabia. All of this during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Elie Wiesel’s memory tells us that we have an obligation to speak out against these atrocities.

But the killing also came much closer to home for us. In the last few days, we have seen national headlines captured by the death of two more Black men at the hand of police officers. In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 37-year-old Alton Sterling was shot dead while two police officers held him down on the ground. His crime? Selling bootlegged CDs outside a convenience store, and, apparently, exercising his Second Amendment right to carry a gun.

Then, just yesterday, came the news of another incident. In Falcon Heights, Minnesota, 35-year-old Philando Castile was shot by a police officer during what should have been a routine traffic stop. The cause? His girlfriend who was in the car at the time of the shooting says that he was pulled over for “a busted taillight.” Castile was a school cafeteria worker who was called “Mr. Rogers with dreadlocks” by his colleagues. Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton has said that he does not think that Castile would have been shot by the police if he had been white.

To add tragedy upon tragedy, we learned last night that a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas, Texas, was ended by a rooftop sniper who, intent on killing white police officers, shot fourteen people. Five law enforcement officers are dead – Michael Krol, Patrick Zamarripa, Brent Thompson, Michael Smith, and one more officer whose name has not yet been released. The shooter was killed by responding police officers who acted bravely to prevent further deaths. It is not clear if the shooter had accomplices.

In the aftermath of all of this horror, what can we do? If we are to follow Elie Wiesel’s example, we should make sure that the memory of these events is not lost. We should choose to make sure that these stories are told over and again. We should grieve for the dead and bring comfort to their families.

But we must do more. The highest calling of a Jew is to be a servant of God and a servant of all humanity.

We must make sure that poisonous and hateful ideologies – like those that motivated the mass killings in the Middle East and East Asia – gain no further foothold. We must build partnerships with our Muslim brothers and sisters who declare loudly to the world that this is not what their religion stands for.

And we must also take action against the violence here at home. We must speak out against American racism which is all-too-evident on our streets and on the public airwaves. We must be willing, when we hear racist comments in our everyday lives to denounce them. Jews are supposed to have big mouths. Well, we need to use them. If you hear someone say something hateful, go on and tell him or her what you think of it. There is too much in our society right now that is sending the message that it is okay to say disparaging things about people because of their race or heritage. Starting now, we are all part of the counter-message. It is not okay.

We also have to do something about the easy access to guns in our society. The Second Amendment may have been written in the 18th Century to keep us free, but, in the 21st Century, it is being interpreted in a way that is taking away the right and freedom to live for too many Americans.

And, we need to keep building partnership with law enforcement. This afternoon, I attended a press conference with Governor Raimondo, Senators Reed and Whitehouse, and senior members of Rhode Island’s law enforcement establishment. They are on the right side. They want to make sure that police officers in the Ocean State are living up to the motto of “Protect and Serve,” but they need our help. We need to stand up for the good cops and help them train police officers to be effective. We also need to give them the support they need to get rid of the bad ones. The days of defending any police officer, any time, for doing anything is now over. Our law enforcement officials know it. We have to help them stand by their best intentions to keep us all safe.

I am so sorry that all of this has happened in the week following the passing of Elie Wiesel, but his memory can guide us and prepare us to build a better world. He would want us to be true servants of the Jewish people, of Jewish values, and of all the people of the world.

Shabbat shalom.

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